The Face of Humanity in the TrenchesThe Shadow of Grey in Military Service

Memorial Day is on my mind to-day, and the juxtaposition of internal convictions concerning it. I am not a great defender of wars, though I believe in the possibility of just wars, and I am a lover of peace, though I am not myself a pacifist. I believe in self-defense, though I am convicted to practice patience.

I am not different from other men, and so I presume to think I might know a little about what other men are like; they are like me, and I am like they, mutually human, mutually moved by the same desires and loves which are common to all who behold the goodness of the world and seek to preserve it, better it, defend it, love it, cherish it, and yes, even die for it. To love the Good is to surrender your life for it, one way or another.

Men such as this are yet greater than I in one special respect; they have had to put the juxtaposition of internal convictions within a fiery crucible deeper and more devastating than the crucibles which have tempered my life. I have not had to decide whether or not to stop the convoy when a boy stands in the middle of an Arab road, and wonder whether or not he is strapped with bombs. I have never had to unleash a warplane’s payload. I have never had to choose whether or not another man lives or dies. I have never had flash backs, or war-born post traumatic stress disorder, nor have I ever been ordered to do something which, when asked by my future sons, I can only reply, “I don’t want to talk about that”. The soldier, their convictions, their instincts, their drives, their very humanity is put to the test, and afterward they bear the scars, often forever, throughout the rest of their days.

War is a hellish field of gore, regret, and sorrow. A violent garden where the seeds of bone are planted and out of which spring forth the many crosses which bloom upon the hills, and beneath the little trees, dotted with names and dates upon the petals. Incarnate stories hang nailed to those crosses, and whether they were thieves or kings, they nonetheless hang; remembered or forgotten.

…these scars mark the flesh of Men, who stand before God for both judgement and for healing, and in the Last Day after the Last Battle, they too will find at last the Peace which they in their deepest innocence fought for, which they in their deepest pains lost.

It is not my practice to protest the day, like some of my free friends, who mean well and have powerful reasons which inspire their protests; neither is it my practice to party on this day, like my other free friends who likewise mean well and have powerful reasons which inspire their parties. Each is free to their path; whether they protest or party, I understand both. The protesters protest violence, brutality, and abuse; the crimes which happen during wars, and the crimes which cause them, and the crimes which inspire men to acts of mutual cruelty. The partiers celebrate the ideals and the persons which represent them, and they celebrate the virtues, the acts of courage, sacrifice, and love of friends, family, and land which inspired such actions. They celebrate the worthy warrior as much as the protesters denounce the barbarous bandit.

As for me, here, I do both, insofar as I solemnly contemplate the awful sorrow of battle, and the sublimity of the persons who survived or died. The mess of war complicates simplistic emotional responses, and it provides a plenitude of moral conundrums. It is itself a shadow of the crucible which the soldiers face in the immediacy and chaos of combat, soldiers who are there for one reason or another, from the Westpoint graduate who seeks to honour his family, coming from a long lineage of military veterans, to the impoverished son, freshly married, just looking for a dignified way for his family to get out of the economic sinkhole into which they were born. Each has his reason, each is driven by an animating impetus, a compelling genius which inspires their will to action, especially to acts of love, existing again in juxtaposition with the acts which warfare compels them to do. Acts which they wish they could forget in the middle of the night when they hold their wives, when they carry their children, when they visit their friend’s graves.

Some might feel inclined to see soldiers as devils. Devils do not hold convictions in juxtaposition within their conscience as Men do. Devils are given to their depravity. Some might feel inclined to see soldiers as infallible gods; I would caution against such idolatry. Every soldier carries with him deep and indelible scars, but these scars mark the flesh of Men, who stand before God for both judgement and for healing, and in the Last Day after the Last Battle, they too will find at last the Peace which they in their deepest innocence fought for, which they in their deepest pains lost.

And so it is, compelled by the inspiring genius of an animating impetus; I love the soldier. And whether the war was just or unjust, may he find the Peace, and settle into the hush of Love which puts away strife between Men.

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An Anglo-Catholic Episcopalian; Catholic and Reformed. An ecumenical and universal Christian. An artist, writer, poet, and scholar; a lover of beauty, truth, goodness, theology, philosophy, nobility, and creativity. An advocate of free markets, personal excellence, entrepreneurship, and voluntary forms of Aristocracy and Monarchy.
Staff Illustrator for the Altar and Throne.

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